Privacy Policy

Hearology^® is a trading name of Glorious Day Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 04045932), with its registered office at Unit A3, Gateway Tower, 32 Western Gateway, London E16 1YL. We provide ear care and audiology at our five clinics: London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Orpington, Oxted and Forest Row.

Glorious Day Ltd is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This policy covers hearology.uk, our clinics, and any contact you have with us by phone, email or social media.

The information we collect depends on how you use our services:

• When you book online: your name, email address, phone number, date of birth and postcode, the appointment you choose, and any promotional code you use. Your date of birth helps us set the right appointment length and check that the appointment is suitable.
• When you book for a child or young person: the child's name and date of birth, and the parent or guardian's name, email address, phone number and postcode, with their confirmation that they are the parent or guardian and consent to the appointment.
• When you receive care: your clinical history, examination findings, test results, treatment notes and any letters to or from other health professionals. This is health information, which the law treats as special category data.
• When you pay: a record of the payment. We never see or store your full card details; payments are handled by Stripe.
• When you contact us: what you tell us in a form, email, call or message, and our reply.
• When you visit our website: technical information such as your device, browser and the pages you visit. Anything beyond what's strictly necessary is collected only if you agree to it in our cookie banner.

We see children aged 3 to 12 for children's ear cleaning, and young people aged 13 to 17 for ear wax removal. A parent or legal guardian books these appointments, gives their details and consent, and comes to the appointment with the child. We check that the adult with the child is their parent or legal guardian before we go ahead.

We use a child's information only to provide and record their care, and we contact the parent or guardian about it, not the child.

• to book, confirm, change and remind you about appointments;
• to provide your care, keep accurate clinical records and, where you agree, share information with your GP or another health professional;
• to take payment and keep financial records;
• to answer your questions and deal with any complaint;
• to protect our website and booking system from spam and misuse;
• to understand how our website is used and improve it, if you agree to analytics cookies;
• to send you ear health tips and offers, only if you ask us to.

We never use your health information for marketing, and we never sell your personal information.

The law allows us to use personal information only where we have a lawful basis. We rely on:

• Contract: to book and provide the appointment you ask for, and to take payment.
• Health or social care (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(h)): to process health information for your care, by or under the responsibility of a registered health professional.
• Legal obligation: to keep clinical and financial records for as long as the law and professional rules require.
• Legitimate interests: to run our clinics safely, keep our systems secure and handle complaints, where this doesn't override your rights.
• Consent: for marketing emails and for non-essential cookies. You can withdraw your consent at any time.

We only send you marketing emails if you tick the "keep my ears in good hands" box when you book or get in touch. The box is never ticked for you. Every email has a link to unsubscribe in one tap, and you can also ask us to stop at any time by emailing dataprotectionofficer@hearology.uk.

Unsubscribing from marketing doesn't affect the emails we send about your appointments.

Our website uses Cookiebot to ask for your consent to cookies, together with Google Consent Mode. Everything except strictly necessary cookies is switched off until you choose. We don't place analytics or advertising cookies without your consent, and we never send your name, email address or health information to analytics tools.

Some features load content from other services only when you use them. For example, our maps load map tiles when you view them, and videos load only when you press play.

This is the full list of cookies our website uses, what each one does and how long it lasts. It's kept up to date automatically by Cookiebot, our consent-management platform, so it always matches the cookies actually in use.

We share information only where we need to, and only with organisations that protect it to the standards the law requires. They act on our instructions under a written agreement, and may not use your information for their own purposes.

• Payments: Stripe, to take online payments securely.
• Booking, email and IT: the providers that run our booking calendar, website, email and clinical systems.
  • Neon: hosts the database that holds your booking or enquiry while we process it.
  • Postmark: sends our booking and enquiry emails.
  • Vercel: hosts our website and runs our online booking.
  • Cloudflare: protects our website and manages our domain names.
• Security: Cloudflare, whose Turnstile check helps stop automated spam on our forms.
• Cookies and analytics: Cookiebot and Google, only as you allow in the cookie banner.
• Maps: our map provider, which receives your device's internet address when map tiles load.
  • Mapbox: supplies the map tiles on our clinic pages; your browser fetches them directly from Mapbox.
  • Google Places: supplies our clinics' public Google ratings; it receives no information about you.
• Your care: your GP, a hospital or another health professional, with your agreement or where it's needed for your safety.
• Where the law requires it: for example, to a regulator such as the Care Quality Commission, or where a court orders it.

Some of our providers store or process information outside the UK. When they do, we make sure it is protected by UK adequacy regulations or by approved contract terms, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

We keep clinical records for as long as professional guidance and the law require. For adults this is usually eight years after your last appointment. For children, it is until their 25th birthday, or their 26th if they were 17 at the end of their treatment, whichever is later.

We keep financial records for six years. The website keeps no copy of your enquiry once it has been delivered to our team; the enquiry stays in our email for up to two years. Marketing preferences are kept until you unsubscribe. After that, information is securely deleted or anonymised.

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct anything that is wrong or incomplete;
• ask us to delete your information, where we don't need to keep it by law;
• object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use your information;
• ask for information you gave us to be sent to you or another provider in a common format;
• withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it.

To use any of these rights, email dataprotectionofficer@hearology.uk. There's no charge, and we'll reply within one month. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.

We protect your information with access controls, encryption when it travels over the internet, secure providers and regular staff training. Only the people who need your information to look after you can see it. If something goes wrong, we have a procedure for dealing with it and will tell you and the Information Commissioner's Office when the law requires us to.

We review this policy regularly. When we change it, we'll update the date at the top of this page, and we'll tell you directly if a change affects you significantly.

For any question about this policy or your information, email our Data Protection Officer at dataprotectionofficer@hearology.uk or write to Data Protection Officer, Glorious Day Ltd, Unit A3, Gateway Tower, 32 Western Gateway, London E16 1YL.

To make a complaint about any other part of our service, email complaints@hearology.uk.